Traveling Between the Lines: Europe in 1938 / Rebecca McBride

Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Rebecca
McBride gained a love of travel from her parents who, as this book shows, loved
to travel themselves. She is a freelance writer and editor, who has a Ph.D. in
English from the University of Pennsylvania. For more, visit her website.

Description:

In the
summer of 1938, the author’s parents traveled throughout Western Europe on a
shoestring budget. After their deaths,
she found 4 notebooks that contained her father’s diary from this trip. Reading
his diary, she found herself learning more about her parents as a young couple
and about Europe immediately before the start of WWII – people very different from
the parents she knew, and a world very different from the one that emerged from
the war.

Appraisal:

The
majority of this book is a transcription of the author’s father’s diaries from
the trip. The concise, day-by-day description of their travels brings a sense
of immediacy to the writing – you feel like you know the writer (John) and his
wife (Margaret) and are traveling with them.
The author did considerable research into pre-war Europe (especially on
the Continent, but including England and Wales as well) in her effort to
understand the social and political climate in which her parents were
travelling. She intersperses her own
commentary throughout the book, providing details on things that John and
Margaret took for granted, but which might not be as familiar to the modern
reader. Since this book is also her way
of getting to know her (young) parents better, she asks many questions of her
father – what were they thinking at the time, why they did something, how they
felt about an event. The questions do
not detract from the flow of the book, and serve to highlight the fact that it
is a very personal story. The historical
commentary is brief and to the point, and serves its purpose well.

It is
inevitable, because of the timeframe the book covers, that there are a lot of
questions – mostly left unanswered – about the political situation in
Germany. At the time, the Nazis had
already seized power and were starting to push their agenda. Austria had been annexed. A kristalnacht
had occurred in many major cities. Jews
were finding themselves under more and more restrictions. Military presence could be seen on the
streets. Anglophobia was becoming
noticeable. Chamberlain’s policy of
appeasement was taking its toll. The burning questions that the author had for
her parents was how much they knew about what was really going on in Germany.
How much did they know before they left the United States? What did they learn while travelling? Was their decision to spend a good amount of
time in Germany made because they truly felt there was no danger or were they
being naïve? There are no answers – and the author realizes that, but
understands that the questions themselves must still be asked.

Format/Typo Issues:

None. Formatting
for the Kindle edition was excellent.
There were many images of old photographs (taken during the trip) along
with captions included in the book. The
quality of the images wasn’t as good as I would have liked, but there’s no way
of knowing what the quality of the original prints was. I read this on a Kindle DX, and there were
occasions when the caption for the picture was on the next page.

Al, thank you for the review. I appreciate it. The quality of the original black and white prints is wonderful, and when they're shown on a screen (digitally), they are amazing. I'll see what I can do to improve the quality in the Kindle book.

I recently read a similar type of book, "Drifting on a Headwind" by Jim Harlan. The book is a memoir of the author's life as he travels through some of the most remote areas of the world. It was a truly inspiring book, and I am sure Rebecca McBride's is- can't wait to check it out!http://uncommonadventurespress.com/

Disclaimer:

Many of the books reviewed by BigAls' Books and Pals are free review copies received from the author or a representative in exchange for an honest review.

BigAl's Books and Pals may receive a small commission for purchases made at Amazon.com, Amazon.uk, Barnes and Noble, or Smashwords after clicking on a link to one of their products as well as clicking on any other ad presented.

Reviews and posts are the opinion of the individual reviewer or post author.

(c) 2011-2017 BigAl's Books and Pals and the individual review or post author. Theme images by mammuth. Powered by Blogger.